


Stopgap Measures

by idelthoughts



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, F/M, Gen, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Non-consensual mind control, Sentinel/Guide Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-24 22:17:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6168763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idelthoughts/pseuds/idelthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Technically, Henry didn’t need a Guide.  He’d gotten along for most of his life without one.  He’d learned to cope, better than most lone Sentinels, but now that he’s met Jo, he’s remembering how much better he is with one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up being a retelling of the season story arc through a [Sentinel-Guide lens](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sentinel_and_Guide). It's a pretty flexible AU, so I got to throw in my own interpretations of how Sentinels and Guides work.
> 
> There are definite elements of non-con throughout the story (thanks Adam and institutional 19th century medicine), and Henry's arc accidentally ended up being an abuse victim/survivor story, so if those things bother you this is not recommended reading.
> 
> Thank you to [htbthomas](http://archiveofourown.org/users/htbthomas/pseuds/htbthomas) for the beta reading!
> 
> Be sure to check out all the other [ficathon](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Tropes_Gone_Wild_Forever_Ficathon_Week) stories for lots of tropey goodness!

Technically, Henry didn’t need a Guide. He’d gotten along for most of his life without a Guide. He’d learned to cope, better than most lone Sentinels.

However, he couldn’t deny that he’d been so much better with Abigail.

When she’d left, he’d fallen into a hole he’d barely been able to climb out of. Forty years with a Guide as his loving partner had changed that status quo, and now? Now he was just as sharp, but damned if he could keep himself in the present. His previous coping mechanisms were very slow to return in any strength.

He didn’t regret his fine-tuned ability to notice things. He could focus on and pick up tiny details with all his heightened senses and centuries of experience, but each little detail was a string to the past. He was too easily pulled into it, leaving him standing there staring, helpless.

Abe tried to help. He’d seen his mother managing his father his whole life, and though he didn’t have either a Guide or a Sentinel’s senses, he knew what to do. A gentle touch on the arm, a soft word, sometimes the humming of a song to bring Henry out of it. A cup of coffee waved under his nose worked well if he was all-consumed and his senses needed jogging back into the present.

Without the deeper connection, it was a weak patch over a gaping hole. Abe tried, but he could only do so much.

The connection with Abigail had been a surprise, and Henry knew he’d not find something like that again. It might have been part of why he loved her so deeply, part of how she understood him so well, though he suspected she would have loved him just as much even without a Sentinel-Guide connection.

In the past decade the fugues had gotten worse. Henry was going to have to admit soon that it was a problem. A man on guard couldn’t afford to leave himself zoned out and vulnerable in unexpected situations. He kept his scarves close, gently scented with Abigail’s perfume—what little he had left of it, just a touch—to ground him. It helped on most days, but those days were fewer; her influence was fading along with her perfume.

It didn’t matter, he told himself again and again. It suited him fine, the way he was. Absent-minded he might be, but he was smart, fast, and adaptable enough to rise to any challenge.

The easy connection to the past wasn’t all inconvenience. The nights he sat with an old dress of Abigail’s in his hand, rubbing the cloth between his fingers and pressing it to his face, falling into his memories so deeply he might be there with her again, were his best moments these days.

After the morning Abe found Henry in his laboratory in his clothes from the night before, asleep in his chair because his mind and body were exhausted from the hours-long uninterrupted fugue, Henry made sure to never let it happen anywhere but behind the closed door of his bedroom.

Abe always knew anyway, could see it in the pale cast of Henry’s face, but this way he never said anything.

***

Henry stood outside on the street marvelling at the building stonework, at the minute pebbling in the mortar, at the streaks of basalt in the granite. He was spiralling downward fast, and struggling against his senses did nothing. The scent of Abigail’s perfume was too faint to make a difference.

“Henry? Hey, Henry. You coming?”

Jo’s words swung like a baseball bat through his fugue, tore the shutters from his mind and brought the bright world into focus.

Henry started violently. He immediately clamped down on that reaction and straightened his scarf and collar, trying to cover his alarm.

A Sentinel, especially a strong one, left alone too long with only overclocked senses for company, became inwardly focused as a coping mechanism. It was more common in older Sentinels, the ones who’d never bonded, or never had family members to care for them as they aged. It was the only clue to Henry’s age that he couldn’t hide, but most people took it as a sign he was exceptionally gifted—or burdened, depending on their point of view.

They weren’t wrong. They just didn’t know it was because he had two hundred years being subjected to those overactive senses, along with two hundred years of sense memories to reinforce all his naturally strong talents.

There were times when the past swelled up so strongly he could barely see the world in front of him. The bricks pressing through the soles of his shoes on an old street, a flash of white cloth fluttering from a window, the apples under the sunshine in front of a bodega, and suddenly the 1890s again; as though the rolling of carts and call of stall grocers, the scream of children in the streets, and the flap of fresh laundry, all were so vivid and bright as to be real.

Henry was useless under the weight of it all.

Jo cocked her head to the side, a puzzled smile on her face, as Henry fidgeted and avoided her gaze. When he didn’t recover immediately, she stopped smiling and took a step towards him.

“Are you alright?” she asked, scanning him over.

Jo was entirely too perceptive. Not that it was hard to see how rattled he was.

She’d called him—a proper Guide’s call—and Henry responded like she’d hooked him and reeled him in on a line. Just like Abigail had done all those years ago, when they’d stood over a tiny infant, him barely in the present amongst all the insanity. With the gentle words, “Are you a doctor?” she’d called him to her, focused him. He’d come, unable to do aught else.

“Yes, of course. Fine, just… considering the architecture. Classic style.”

She wasn’t buying it, but he adopted an aloof and unconcerned attitude and she backed off.

Like Henry and Abigail, Jo and Sean had been a bonded Sentinel-Guide pair as well as husband and wife. Romance was not an expected nor standard part of Sentinel-Guide relationships, but those that did bond as well as fall in love formed a tight-knit pair that could become so inwardly focused as to be self-destructive in their isolation. Jo obviously had reflexes built up through years with her husband, and the loss had hit her hard in a number of ways.

She was artful in the way she used her talents, as natural as breathing. She was never coercive when interviewing suspects and witnesses, her keen empathy so sharp and insightful that very little slipped past her. A good Guide always saw the lies and barriers people built around themselves; whether they could read what they meant or not was another thing, but they saw them with clarity like they were physical walls around a person.

Knowing there was a secret was half the battle, and the rest was finding out how to unlock it.

He doubted she’d meant anything by it, merely an added push to her words to see if she could knock her wayward Sentinel friend back into line, and nothing more. She couldn’t possibly know how effective it was.

Jo was a good detective, and a skilled Guide, and Henry had too many secrets.

Henry trailed after her into the building like a contented dog on a leash, responding to her conversation on autopilot. Near her, he felt quiet and focused. No wonder he liked working with her so very much. He had instantly trusted her, and now it all made sense. He could easily bond to her, if he let himself get close enough—which he certainly couldn’t. His barriers had been hard won, and distance was much safer than testing their strength. A bond with Jo was as good as handing her a key to the lockbox with all his secrets.

They made it to the second floor where a corpse was laid out, and keen Sentinel senses were hardly required to discern the overripe smell of a body several days dead. Henry snapped on blue gloves and set about his work.

There was no reason he couldn’t enjoy being near Jo. Her influence was light and considerate and admittedly helpful, and they made a very good team. Unless he was mistaken, he suspected she was even sharper thanks to his unintentional response to her call. He didn’t mean to call out to her, but in his excitement it escaped him.

It happened with Guides and Sentinels working in partnership. Hardly unexpected. He only had to be careful about keeping an appropriate distance.

***

Jo drove him home later that night, and he wasn’t ready to let go of the peace of her company yet. His mind, normally such a chaotic place, was quiet. She was an island in the storm of his thoughts.

On a whim, he invited her in for dinner. It meant tolerating the awkward questions that she inevitably asked about him and Abraham, but it was worth it.

He was certain that Guides never knew the effect they had on Sentinels. The way the literature described it, and from what Abigail told him, it was the opposite for Guides—when feeling the call of a Sentinel, the world was a brighter place. Guides always had a keen perception of people and their inner workings, each action and motivation as easy to navigate as a roadmap, but rarely was anything in the world as real as the people around them.

To them, a Sentinel was like fire against a dim backdrop, and a connection made the world flare to life along with their partner. In return, a calm and present Sentinel. Two halves of a coin found balance in shared traits.

But in balance, in connection, there was risk. It was the Guides who manipulated their skills, who fed off the call of desperate Sentinels in search of peace and relief from their overwrought senses, and took advantage—they terrified him. He’d been there too many times to risk letting that happen again. Abigail was an anomaly. He’d been so lucky that she’d accepted him on so many levels, and been worthy of his faith and trust. Henry might crave a Guide’s influence, but he feared the power they had over him.

But Jo—he didn’t mind Jo. She didn’t push, she didn’t bully or take, she was just…there. She was considerate and gentle.

Jo had quiet patience that fairly oozed from her. Henry wasn’t a patient man, even though he’d learned a fairly good semblance of it. With Jo, however, he could slow down the racing of his mind, and life took on a languid quality.

Sometimes, anyway. When he let himself run with his boundless enthusiasm, he trampled all over that quiet nature of hers, his own call luring her along into the loud, bright Sentinel perspective. His dinnertime conversation bubbled over with his excitement to relate story after story, and she laughed and waved her hands, telling him to take a breath.

The teasing demand made him laugh joyfully and sit back in his seat to breathe as she asked, putting himself in check.

He’d not meant to extend himself thus and call out to her. The Sentinel-Guide neurological reflex was instinctive; no one could completely control it. They all learned how to moderate themselves as the traits developed through puberty. One could keep it to a whisper underlying interactions rather than a rude shout, but it required conscientious self-awareness and practiced calm.

He’d gotten carried away, and the flush of Jo’s cheeks and the shine in her eyes gave away her heightened perception of the lights, the food, the soft spring wind on her skin, of Henry and Abe here with her. Henry took a sip of wine as he winked at her over the rim of his glass, and she shook her head with a fond smile.

He put his glass down and caught Abe watching him, eyebrow raised. He didn’t dignify it with a response. Instead he picked up a basket of bread and offered it to Jo.

By the end of the night, he didn’t want her to leave. He felt more present than he had in decades as he showed her to the door, both of them full of wine and laughter. Henry ran through the evening again in his head as he came back upstairs to the apartment.

“You zoned out, or just daydreaming about pretty detectives?”

Abe had his hands on his hips, childishly gleeful. Abe revelled in Henry’s vulnerability and weaknesses, ever so eager to remind Henry at each opportunity that he was, for all his years, only human.

“She is indeed beautiful. However, we are colleagues, nothing more.”

“Right, right. _Colleagues_.”

“My life is complicated enough. I’m not looking to complicate it further.”

“Oh, I dunno. Seems like the detective here has a simplifying effect on your life.”

As always, what Abe lacked in subtlety he made up for in perception—he’d seen perfectly well the influence Jo held over him when she exerted it, even when it was just a whisper.

Little wonder; Abe had grown up knowing Henry as a grounded, stable, bonded Sentinel. Only in the last thirty years had he been forced to put up with Henry and his removed, absent-minded mania and melancholy. Henry might be able to hide his inner workings from most of the world, but Abe knew him far too well to have it slide past.

“Goodnight, Abe,” he said with emphasis.

“‘Night, Henry.”

Henry left Abe to his puttering and went to ready himself for bed.

***

As the months passed, he let himself be swayed by Jo far too much. It was dangerous, and he knew it.

When he found himself sitting at his desk, fountain pen poised a half-inch above the paper in useless repose, entertaining scenarios where she knew about his immortality and it was no longer a secret between them, he knew that he was in far over his head.

Her cleverness, her centred way of looking at the world, her authoritative calm, her good humour, were all the counterweights to his weaknesses; his flighty nature, his hubris and single-mindedness, his fear. She was as true a partner as he’d had in a long time, and it went far beyond a work partnership.

What would it be like to roll over, to give in to that constant nagging pull at the back of his brain that begged to reach out to her, to completely embrace her call? Would she be surprised to know how completely she’d harnessed him, how much energy it took to keep from kneeling at her feet and letting her have complete control of him if she wished it? It terrified him how much he wanted that.

He couldn’t. He could never; his hesitation and deception would be a constant irritant between them, and if she pushed even the slightest bit he would confess all.

Still, it was a pleasant dream. His head on her knee, her fingers gliding through his hair, his mind calm as she spoke to him. Their nervous systems would settle into sympathetic harmony, his senses heightening hers, her senses calming his. Bonding could be a beautiful equilibrium.

After Nora, after the doctors, Henry had feared how easily he lost himself, how easily he fell when a Guide pushed. With Abigail, he’d relearned that bonding could be built on trust and equality, rather than a state of subjugation and surrender, but his natural ability to find that balance point had been irreparably damaged. Abigail had been a patient partner who helped him find his centre once again, but all he’d done was become dependent on her. The last thirty years had been spent clawing his way back to his own status quo, away from any Guides, away from doctors, away from friends—anyone who could threaten him.

He’d set himself a lot of rules and guidelines for his own good, but Jo was creeping over all the lines inch by inch. He hadn’t realized how far he’d let her in until she was already there.

And so, he found himself daydreaming about bonds, about friendship, about honesty and trust. Sometimes he was sure he felt her calming influence even when she wasn’t there, like a phantom hand soothing his spinning mind.

The idea of someone he could trust who knew everything about him was as intoxicating as it was frightening.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Hello, Henry. I didn’t want us to meet like this.”

Damn Adam. Damn him to hell and back, damn him to eternal fire and brimstone—a curse worth putting on the head of an immortal, if Henry could manage it.

Most of all, damn his own idiot body and mind for its utter betrayal.

Henry started to feel the call long before he heard Adam’s footsteps and felt the blade of his knife against his neck while Jo walked on the floor above him.

Fear should have driven Henry away from the lulled state of Sentinel-Guide harmony. Usually the flood of adrenaline from fear and pain blocked and disrupted the call and response instincts, but blood loss and shock had numbed him.

“Relax, Henry,” Adam said. “No need to struggle.”

Adam’s fingers stroked the nape of Henry’s neck as he lay there, his back broken, choking on his own blood. The deepest part of him felt Adam calling to him, calming him, bringing his distressed, pained senses down to a dull roar.

Henry sighed and ceased struggling. There was no need. A distantly familiar peace washed through him, stronger than the pain, stronger than his surroundings. If he could have reached out for Adam, he would have. Adam’s fingers moved slowly, ceaseless and soothing, and Henry sunk deeper.

Henry didn’t want it to end, even knowing his exposure was at risk as Jo’s footsteps came closer.

Adam’s weight and power was sheer instant bliss. The grip of his fingers in Henry’s hair, tugging his head back to expose his neck, and the slide of his knife blade across his neck—all of it barely registered.

Henry burst from the water with a gasp, clutching his neck in confusion, treading water and looking around. He’d hadn’t felt the final killing blow.

Normally after a death Henry was raw, all senses in overdrive and threatening to suck him down again if he didn’t concentrate on the shore and the steady, rhythmic stroke of his arms and legs cutting through the water.

Instead, all he felt was the perfect peace of a fully sympathetic bond.

Compatibility. With _Adam_. Frightening, psychotic Adam, who sliced his throat without hesitation, as though slaughtering an animal for dinner.

That was the call he’d been feeling in those odd moments when he was alone, thinking himself going mad, imagining Jo’s gentle presence when she wasn’t there. Instead it was Adam, lurking around, stalking him.

Henry should have felt frightened, but all he felt was dull, calm peace.

It lasted days, and when his mind returned to its normal state, his fury was unmanageable. He didn’t know if he was angrier with Adam and his manipulation, or with his own body for so eagerly responding.

***

Awareness made no difference. Adam sent Henry to his death in a taxi, and Henry accepted it without protest.

No, worse—he’d _enjoyed_ it.

Henry, loose and lulled in the back seat as the water filled the space, could barely bring himself to struggle as his lungs filled. Adam’s Guiding abilities were honed and sharpened over thousands of years, and Henry was already so tempted to find that golden peace again…

He’d enjoyed his own premeditated murder. Henry was at peace because of Adam, as whole and content as if they were deeply bonded. He wanted to be disgusted, but couldn’t dredge up any feelings at all other than contentment.

That contented numbness took Henry through his arrest and subsequent interrogation by Lieutenant Reece.

“Why were you naked?” she asked. She eyed him uncertainly while Henry smiled at her, completely unconcerned.

“I sleep naked.”

That was enough to put her off her questioning. Though Reece was neither Guide nor Sentinel, she worked with enough to know that something was wrong. She dismissed him and told him to go home.

His escape wasn’t that simple—Jo caught him as soon as he left Reece’s office and steered him towards the elevator away from the giggling precinct detectives and uniformed officers, bathing suit and goggles clutched in his hands.

“Want to tell me what happened?”

Jo tried to hide it, but she was worried. Her concern lent her questions a Guide’s insistence, much stronger than her normal restrained, whispered influence.

“Not really. Long night,” he said weakly, but he’d stopped in the hall, facing her. He’d been set on going home, but now he was quite content to stay here with her.

“Henry,” she said. She stepped close and touched his arm. “Are you alright?”

Her call reached into the very same centre of his mind as Adam had conquered.

“I’m…” he trailed off, forgetting what he was going to say. Some dismissal of her concern. That was important. He’d been going somewhere, he was…

Resting on the edge already, Henry was easily sucked back down into that placid state, becoming pliant and suggestible. The obvious crease of worry between her eyebrows bothered him, and so he called out to her instinctively to soothe her.

Jo blinked and her hand twitched on his arm with the suppressed urge to assume the intimate gesture of hands cupping his head, around his ears, fingertips settled in the dip at the back of his skull, where the feeling of peace radiated like heat when two people settled into harmony. Henry tipped his head forward in the automatic offer.

Instead, like the responsible and ethical person she was, she distanced herself, carefully taking a step back from him.

“You want to talk about it?” she said quietly.

He nearly opened his mouth and told her all, but the sudden realization of how far he’d slipped into repose sent enough adrenaline through him, fear and caution, to knock some sense back into him. He shook his head to clear it and stepped back from her.

“Sorry,” he said with an embarrassed, apologetic smile, because her eyes were dilated and she was very obviously itching to touch him, her empathetic senses responding to his loud and wailing Sentinel call. “No, I’m fine, Jo. Long night, that’s all.”

“Okay.” She put a hand to the wall as though in need of support, watching him with large eyes.

He left her without another word and headed straight for his office to hide. He was too muddled to talk to people right now, and needed to collect himself.

***

Henry’s erratic behaviour and disorientation in the following days as he struggled with Adam’s cat and mouse game were obvious to everyone—an unbonded Sentinel sliding off the deep end into mental instability, was the assumption.

Reece sent him to mandatory therapy. He ran hot and cold at the very thought.

Therapy. Guides so powerful and strong they twisted the mind.

Nora had been his bonded Guide, once upon a time. She’d tricked him, had used that connection to lure out the truth from him, and handed him over to the hospital’s tender care. He’d been a limp, meek rag to be abused at their leisure, as they tried to convince him his immortality was a figment of a diseased mind.

The man who called himself a doctor knew all the ways to leave a Sentinel weak and vulnerable. Beatings, darkness followed by painful light, leaving him to the stench and discomfort of his own filth, on and on until he was near comatose with overloaded senses. At that point, any Guide’s calming touch was enough to make him weep with gratefulness at the relief, and he would lie at the doctor’s feet and blubber his devotion and eagerness to please, if only he could stay there forever.

They asked and asked, and no matter how many times he tried to lie, Henry would admit over and again he still believed himself immortal. They forced his mind open like a shucked oyster. They toyed with him endlessly until they pronounced him beyond hope and sent him away.

For decades he’d hated the curse of being a Sentinel when he had such a secret to hide, for being so vulnerable to Guides and their manipulative, brutal call. They’d trained him to submit, and he didn’t know how to fix himself. It was a long time before he could do more than turn and run when he felt a Guide’s gentle brush, and he became odder and odder over the years as he was forced to learn stop-gaps to keep himself ordered, to keep from losing himself to overstimulation.

Deduction became a godsend—his hyper-vigilant senses might pick up everything, but if he could race ahead of them, verbalize the story they told, then he could survive their influx. Using the flood of knowledge saved him from becoming overfull with it. He could survive alone, and did so fine enough.

It wasn’t until Abigail that he trusted another Guide, and over the decades she’d eased his suspicion and healed his wounds. Now he could stand to be near them, could function in daily life. Could even make friends, like with Jo…

A friend, he called her. She was more than that, and he knew it.

Henry had a terrible habit of falling in love as it was, and with a Guide who brought him such peace? Oh, he never stood a chance. First Nora, then Abigail; now, Jo.

Where Adam sat in all this, he didn’t know. Henry tried not to think about it.

***

For a time in the Nineteenth Century, society pronounced Sentinel and Guide leanings to be a form of mental illness. Though over twenty-five percent of the population presented in some form, many were able to hide their traits. Others, the more gifted, those previously considered to serve respectable roles in society, weren’t so lucky. Henry, edging towards a century of life and a head still scarred by the medical torture, spent a long forty years doubly burdened with impossible to hide secrets.

By the thousands, people were experimented on, lobotomized, brainwashed, in attempts to beat the instincts out of them and reprogram them to participate in normal society. Henry was caught up in the frenzy in 1895 and held for an agonizing year of ‘treatment,’ and after an escape through suicide he’d headed for America to start anew once more.

The stigma faded as the Twentieth Century dawned, but it wasn’t until the 1960’s when studies of the brain progressed to a more advanced level that people started to understand the neurological components at play in Sentinel and Guide behaviour. They identified the developed parts of the pituitary that either heightened empathy and social intelligence in Guides, or overstimulated the body’s senses and processing in Sentinels.

As medical capabilities developed and research progressed, Henry pored over MRI scans of Sentinel and Guide brains in various states of rest, calling, and deep communion. Like understanding of the complex chemical reactions in the body that created emotions like love, lust, hate, fear, devotion, the quantifiability of it all took some of the mystery away—but it did not dilute the potent nature of it. He might know the sections of his brain firing to life when they sensed a Guide’s subtle cues of electrical impulses, hormones, and pheromones, but that didn’t stop him from responding.

Therapeutic treatment was an accepted practice now. It was a licensed medical practice without shame, available for those who had no family or friends to soothe them and provide the much needed harmony that kept them stable. It was a normal and monitored practice. It was nothing like the abuse he’d suffered in those early days.

Even so, Henry gripped the armrests of the comfortable chair with barely managed fear as Lewis Farber puttered about his office making tea and chatting amiably.

They talked, Farber asked questions. There was nothing; no call, not a twitch against his mind. If he didn’t know that Farber was a Guide, as he had to be to be in this profession, he’d have never known it. He had preternatural control over his reflexes. Henry wondered if someday, given a few more centuries of practice, if he’d achieve that level of control.

He could only hope to be so lucky; he seemed to only get worse as time passed.

“Is this it? Is this therapy?” he finally asked. It felt like a joke, this odd, shallow conversation.

Farber chuckled, amused.

“We’ve only just started, Henry. Give it time.”

It happened so smoothly he had no idea when it began. He slowly slid into a dopey state of contentment, drawn into their idle conversation and following the thread of the Guide’s call that now underlay every word. He wasn’t sure when it happened, but both he and Farber were forward in their chairs, leaning towards each other, knees brushing. It was Henry who reached out first, hand on Farber’s face, fingers curving into the dip at the base of his skull, pulling him close until their foreheads touched. Farber held him in return, reassuring him with idle words that Henry need not worry, that he could relax, that he was safe here in this office.

Peace. Steady, beautiful peace.

Farber questioned him and Henry’s answers flowed; his worries, his fears, confidences he usually reserved for Abe alone. All Henry cared about was the press of his forehead to Farber’s and the uncomplicated, simple, flat state of his mind. It was like a hot bath soothing aching muscles, the fire of his thoughts eased.

“There, not so bad, was it?”

Henry blinked. Farber was reclined in his seat with a limp ease that spoke of his own calm.

“No,” Henry rasped. His throat was dry, and the clock said two hours had passed.

“Same time next week?”

He wished he could stay with Farber now, submerged in their link. He nodded instead. Farber showed him to the door.

“The tranquility lounge is at the end of the hall. We ask that you stay for at least fifteen minutes, but you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. See you soon, Henry.”

“Yes. Good day, Dr. Farber.”

He swore Farber didn’t want to let him go any more than Henry wanted to leave, though there was no indication of it in his professional smile.

Decades Henry had gone without connecting to a Guide, and now it was as though his mind couldn’t stop leaping towards any call it found. Jo, Adam, now Farber—Henry was losing his centred, independent self.

All these years of hard work, destroyed. He was too far out of control. He should isolate himself again until he regained that firm equilibrium of his own making.

But now that he’d had a taste of harmonious peace again, he was loath to walk away so quickly.

Farber though; he was safe enough. Therapy was reputable, after all, and not so bad as he’d feared it would be.

No harm could come from this.

***

For a man who couldn’t die, Henry lived with his unfair share of famous last words.

After Henry killed Clark Walker thinking it was Adam, Adam had called to say he was leaving, parked outside and taunting Henry with the call, lulling him. Then Adam left, like it was nothing to walk away. The telephone receiver fell from Henry's numb fingers.

The emergency responders misread it as delayed shock. He didn’t correct them.

Henry spent the next three weeks hiding in his laboratory, either lost in a Sentinel fugue or burying himself in work. No matter how much he scrubbed, the tang of blood lingered under the bleach.

Adam was gone. Henry hated himself for missing whatever connection—he wouldn’t call it a bond, _ever_ —he and Adam had.


	3. Chapter 3

Jo told him he’d made her feel better, and that she wished she could do the same for him.

She did already—she made him so much better. Better than he could ever be alone. But he couldn’t let himself fall farther into that trap; he couldn’t be near her, because the nearer she got, the more she pulled out of him.

Even so, he gravitated towards her company. Their cases together became less a matter of him providing her with autopsy information and crime scene analysis, and more tagging along to interview witnesses and pursue leads.

Sentinel-Guide work teams were an accepted and valued formula. They had their drawbacks, given that it was an unpredictable foundation to base a long-term work relationship on, but the short-term benefits were a boon. It was blatantly obvious that Jo and Henry were an asset to each other. Henry might be overstepping the bounds of his role as medical examiner, but no one was willing to argue given the rate at which they were closing cases.

Hanson had welcomed him as a part of the team readily. As a bonded Sentinel himself, settled and content, Henry suspected that Hanson had a measure of pity for Henry’s state. Unsurprising—the instability Henry exhibited was an uncomfortable reminder of how dependent Sentinels and Guides were upon each other. It was as much a blessing as a curse to many.

Jo’s gentle moderating influence was incremental creeping change, nothing like the terrifying well of numb, blissful calm Adam had dragged Henry into. Jo made him sharper, better, and he did the same for her in return. He felt alive, in control, and ready for anything.

Almost anything.

He wasn’t ready for Jo to so readily accept their unspoken simpatico, and to boldly face the obvious attraction between them. They’d left so much unsaid, and he’d truly believed they would continue to do so.

He’d underestimated her. Jo cracked the door on the truth between them.

Had he been given another minute to deliberate, he would have had to make a decision. As it was, she fled when Abe came home with news of Abigail’s whereabouts.

In the days that came, the exposed truth sitting between them meant Henry had to work all the harder to keep the secrets he had left. She knew he was lying, he couldn’t hide that, but she didn’t know about what.

It would have to be enough.

***

With more discoveries landing in Henry’s lap at each turn, he could ill afford to make any foolish mistakes. However, he was making a long string of impulsive, poorly considered actions. He was striking out blindly, desperate to know what had happened to Abigail. He couldn’t stop himself, even as it chipped away at the life he’d built.

Henry dodged Jo every step of the way as he pursued the truth. The more he found out about Abigail’s life after she’d left him, the more he followed the evidence and let the burning demons of his obsession have reign over his mind, the more Jo called to him. She was plaintive and confused and angry over his dishonesty. He was abusing her fragile trust to the breaking point.

Henry wiggled and resisted her influence, sometimes only by physically running from her and his guilt. He tried to make it subtle, but she wasn’t a fool.

She played her last card. She gave up on subtlety and leaned hard on their connection, trying in vain to reel him back in. Cornered in a holding cell, exhausted from a night sleeping on a hard bench, Jo stood between him and the cell door, her jaw set.

“Who is she, Henry?”

The answers queued up, Henry’s mouth opened. Oh, how he wanted to tell her.

He couldn’t.

“She’s Abe’s mother.”

His false excuses were flags waved in her face, obvious lies that were worse than no answers at all.

“Who is she to _you_?” she asked.

She asked as his friend, but behind it came the slam of her Guide’s call. Instinctive on her part, maybe, but irresistible. Henry’s shoulders slumped and he calmed, his attention focusing down to her rather than the chipped paint of the cell, the lingering tang of body odour, the smell of cold winter air clinging to her jacket.

“She’s…” Henry balked, face red with the effort to keep his answers to himself, and was saved by a phone call.

Someday soon, his luck would run out, and nothing would save him from his own desire to answer Jo’s questions. That would be the day when he would have to concretely refuse her, and the last fragile thread between them would fray and break.

In the meantime, he would try to have the best of both worlds.

***

The breaking point was more painful than Henry had anticipated.

“You have to trust me,” he said, holding the dagger.

There was too much at stake—Abigail’s murder, Adam, his immortality, all of it was far too much to bring her into.

“Not anymore, Henry.”

She dumped him at his door with a fond farewell, but a permanent one. They were done, him and Jo.

A good thing, too. He had business with Adam that was far outside the purview of the police.

He tried to convince himself that it was a good thing, that he wouldn’t have to worry about Jo, to worry about keeping his secrets from her. She’d hurt far less in the long run this way. He only brought pain to those people he cared about.

Every turn of his life, every disaster, every plummeting drop he’d endured again and again in the last thirty years, it was at Adam’s hand.

It was always Adam.

***

He should have wanted to scratch Adam’s eyes out, to murder him with the same casual disregard that Adam held for Henry’s life. He should have hated his very presence, the mere sight of him.

Quivering with rage, he presented the pugio that was the final link.

“Take it. Take it and leave me alone. I want no part of you ever again.”

“You know that’s not true.” Adam took a step towards him, eyes fever-bright and keenly focused, and from his jacket he produced the flintlock pistol. “Oh, Henry, that’s not true at all.”

He pointed, aimed, fired. Henry jerked as the impact slammed him in the chest like a sledgehammer. Exactly the same point as the very first bullet from this gun. He staggered, blood filling his lungs and bubbling up his mouth when he coughed and wheezed.

Adam advanced, lit in stark shapes and shades.

“People never change, Henry. They’re boring and small, uninteresting, running the same little circular track from birth to death and round again for another generation, endless and dull. But you see and feel everything, Henry, like the world is still real to you. Colours and sounds and smells; I’d forgotten that they had any meaning. You feel it all—but it’s too much, all at once. This is either a mercy killing or a lesson. If you die, then I die. If you live, then you’ll learn that we are balance, you and I. You _need_ me.”

“I… I…” He choked on blood. The impact of his body landing on the concrete subway platform jarred his spine, and he collapsed flat on his back.

“Always so energetic. Running here, running there, living life at a mortal’s pace.”

Adam was a step away from him, and the call was unbearably strong. Henry’s eyelids were heavy with it, blinding pain fading under the headiness. Memories of each time Adam had slipped into a bond with him overcame his instinctive fear completely. He was dying, choking, but it didn’t matter. This might well be his true and final death, and he didn’t care a whit.

Adam cupped his face and dug his fingers into the base of Henry’s skull with a sharp move. The blissful wave was so strong Henry’s body convulsed. Blood overflowed his lips, trickling down his cheek to pool in his ear. Adam shushed him, stroking his hair.

“There, there, Henry.”

Adam’s gaunt face hovered over him, and Henry struggled to control his body despite his fading awareness. He flailed a hand to reach for Adam and caught his neck to reciprocate the bond. Adam’s eyes closed and his head sank to meet Henry’s. Their foreheads pressed together.

“Why would you fight it?” Adam whispered to him. “I’ve lived thousands of years, but I haven’t been alive for a long time—until now. You understand. You’ve been slipping away too, you know how much better it is when we’re together. It’s you and me for the rest of our time, however long that may be. You’ll never be alone like I was.”

He could easily imagine Adam’s heavy weight on his body, the ease of his mind, always there and soothing him, the perfect counterbalance to his thoughts. With this serenity, was there anything he couldn’t do? They could achieve such greatness with this perfect clarity. It would be like this forever; there was nothing that could stop them.

Adam was humming softly, a tuneless lullaby. Henry’s hand was on Adam’s neck, the other lying idle by his side.

Adam’s neck. Henry’s hand. There was something he’d meant to do, wasn’t there?

“Shh, Henry. There’s nothing but us.”

The little syringe in his hand. Yes, right.

Adam was so lost in the bond that he barely flinched as Henry slid the needle into his neck and pressed the plunger.

Experiencing a brain aneurysm secondhand through a Sentinel-Guide bond was among the most horrifying experiences of Henry’s life.

***

Abe kept at Henry with tea, with the tantalizing scents of familiar dinner dishes, with the feel of chess pieces in Henry’s fingers, anything he could find that would keep Henry in the present. Even so, it was a full day before Henry came out of the floating haze Adam had left him in.

At first, he wept at the loss. Then, when he’d regained more of himself, he went to stand at Adam’s bedside. The satisfaction in his revenge was enough to soothe away some of Henry’s uncertain grief and loss. Adam’s mind was quiet, and Henry gloated—he’d silenced the monster at last. No black hole pull, no blank, incapacitating bliss.

Revenge felt better than he’d ever imagined. Adam might have brought him peace, but that peace had cost too much, and Henry had paid all he would pay.

But, he was alone.

Adam had ripped at the roots of his soul and shaken him. Henry retreated into himself and his home to reset himself. He needed to learn his independence again.

He had Abe. He had his memories. They would do him, as they always had. He was the better for his isolation.

***

More fool him to think Jo would walk away so easily. He was sure he’d gotten away with it all—right up until she cornered him and flashed a photo in his face.

“I thought you could explain this to me,” she said.

In his complete and utter breath-stealing shock, her words were like a hook in his much-abused brain. He looked from the photo trembling in his hand to her.

His mind was running riot. The photo between his fingers was rough like pebbled cement to his sensitive skin, the fading and blotching of age on the photo paper as vividly obvious as peeling wallpaper. He was losing sight of the picture for its component pieces, his breath a steam engine in his ears, the scent of Jo’s deodorant and hair product sharp and strong, the touch of a hand on his back, the heat searing through his shirt—

“Tell her,” Abe said.

Adam had left his mind scratched and raw, yawing open and wild, and with the added terror he was absorbing too much. The picture slipped from his fingers, the flutter through the air like a swooping bird’s wings, the scratch as it hit the ground like fingernails on a chalkboard. The hands urging him to sit clawed at him, and it was too much, all of it. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Too much, everything was too much…

He was laid out on a couch in the back of the shop when he finally could bring himself to open his eyes. Jo had his hands in hers as she sat alongside him, and it took a moment to realize she was speaking to him quietly.

“Henry, look at me.” She rubbed her thumb over his pulse point.

Her soft touch was cool relief.

“Jo,” he sighed, smiling at her. He was so content in her company.

She smiled briefly in return, but it was strained.

It took Henry another full minute to find lucidity and understand what had happened, and he shied back when he recognized his unguarded passivity. The abrupt surge of fear knocked her hard, and she flinched as sure as if he’d struck her. She tried to pull her hands away, but he clung to them with childish insecurity, unwilling to lose the point of contact. She relented and relaxed again.

“Sorry. You were zoned, and Abe couldn’t bring you back. I didn’t mean to take advantage.”

“Thank you. I’m…” He couldn’t describe what Adam had done to him, and so he didn’t even bother trying. “I’m not at my best right now.”

“I can see that.”

He closed his eyes and steadied his breath, drawing on the centuries of learned practices for calming his mind when his Sentinel instincts reeled out of control. They were feeble and useless. Jo responded instinctively to his plaintive struggle, and her call countered his own, soothing the distress like a balm. When his beating heart slowed to a reasonable pace once more, he sat up and looked at her.

“Henry, what happened to you?” Her voice was steady and certain, but he knew she was nervous—he could smell her sweat, hear her pulse, feel the fine tremors in her hands that were so small as to be invisible to anyone but a Sentinel.

He could see now the edge Jo was teetering on—there was no hiding his grief, his confusion, his fury, his anger, his fatigue, to anyone who could see him, but to a Guide, especially one who already keenly empathized with him, Henry was a storm of distress. She was overwhelmed by his disastrous state, as surely as Henry was overwhelmed by the crushing influx of his environment.

Henry shuffled himself to face Jo and he stroked her cheek.

“Jo, it’s fine. I’m fine.”

“The hell you are, Henry.”

He stroked her cheek again, repeating his words, this time followed by a very purposeful push of his own call, and Jo’s tension slowly bled from her.

Her hands found their way to his face, and he rested his forehead against hers with a sigh. He could fall into her so easily, and he desperately wanted to.

Adam flashed in his mind, then flitted away again. This was nothing like that—he wasn’t lost, subsumed. He was more himself, calmer, clearer. The path ahead felt more certain, the rightness of it easy to see. Jo came into sharp focus, and he relaxed, letting it happen.

He slid his hands to cradle her head, his fingers stroking the back of her neck, and Jo mirrored the action.

His exhaustion was so complete that when his thoughts settled into the pleasant hum of a bonded cycle, his muscles started to slacken without his permission. He teetered and slumped against Jo. Jo’s body rocked in sympathy, and she muttered a low curse. She was frightened and upset, but at this point had far more self-control than Henry did. He lost cohesion, his thoughts scattering as he fell under the hypnotic spell of the bond. Why could he never resist?

“Henry, what...” she trailed off, and then fell silent.

 _Are you immortal, Dr. Morgan?_ It was always the question that had followed his submission as he lay at the feet of the Charing Cross Hospital doctors, weeping at the release from the torture of his senses. _Do you believe you can die and live again?_

 _I love you, Henry. You’re safe, darling,_ Abigail had said as she tucked him close, requiring nothing of him but his contentment and peace. _You can relax, you’re safe._

 _We’re the same, Henry._ Adam’s whisper, underscoring their bond with an iron-fisted finality, Henry unable to fight, wondering if he even wanted to. _You and me, we have an eternity together._

What would Jo’s questions be? What would she want of him? He waited, passive and limp. She was like water rolling over him—she could be hot or cold, gentle or harsh, but now she was a soft cradle holding him.

Her fingers rubbed small circles at the base of his skull, a physical sensation that stimulated a release of hormones. His head lolled, falling forward onto her shoulder. He was a poor partner in this, melting like a puddle into her lap. She could have what she wanted from him. He had no resistance left.

“I’ll tell you.” His face was mashed against her collar, his hands gone limp, and her body was tense trying to hold his leaning weight. “Whatever you want, I’ll tell you.”

“Shh,” she whispered. “Not now. Just rest, and we’ll talk later.”

Her questions were not questions at all. She asked nothing of him. Like that unexpected moment so many years ago with Abigail, she offered him safety rather than demanding answers.

Henry’s tears soaked into her shirt.

“Thank you, Jo,” he mumbled.

He would answer all her questions, because she deserved it. No matter what happened, he would grant her honesty, because it was the only thanks he could possibly give for her kindness and love.

***

Henry and Jo struck a balance from that point forward.  His secrecy was as ingrained as breathing, and even with the best of intentions his story came out as slow as sand trickling through an hourglass. Jo was patient in collecting them all until eventually she held the entire picture in her hands.

Nights of conversation seemed to end the same way—deep in a joint state.  Henry offered Jo the openness Adam had forcefully pried from him, and her trust in return was well worth the reward.  She did not run away from him or expose him, and eventually the instincts that life had brutalized into him caught up with his more trusting nature.  He could trust Jo, and did.

He hadn’t meant to take the route they did, but honesty was much easier for him when coaxed out through their bond.  And he couldn’t deny it any longer, they had bonded.

There was nothing unusual or even surprising in a Sentinel-Guide pair establishing a bond when working in such close partnership as they had over the past year.  Many close colleagues shared it, it was not exclusively a romantic arrangement.  If anything, those were in the minority.  Such bonds could lead to jealousy if one had an insecure romantic partner, but for the most part it was a fact of life that businesses were happy to take advantage of when they could.

No one could force it, but certainly human resources departments were known to juggle employees around to find ideal matches to get the most productivity out of their people.  A bonded partnership brought out the best in each half, and they would use that while it lasted.  People evolved and changed over time as their experiences in life changed them, and so bonds were not a guaranteed lasting life-long partnership, any more than any relationship.

Henry and Jo’s bond was an obvious boon to their casework.  No one was so crass as to congratulate them on finally working it out—aside from Lucas, of course, who hid a cluster of gaudy foil helium balloons in Henry’s office—but there was a general positive sense of approval.

However, neither Jo nor Henry were terribly adept at drawing a line, or interested in doing so, and it proved hard to separate one intimacy from another.

For Henry, who rarely shared any part of himself willingly, to allow Jo into his sphere was tantamount to a marriage proposal, and he fell hard and fast.  To his relief, Jo was still willing to catch him, and accept him in all his strangeness. The first kiss was the last brick to fall, and he knew he could never let her go, not until her last breath.

It wasn’t easy—she couldn’t hide the fact that he scared her at times, that she wondered what she was doing, if she were in over her head.  His own clinging fear demanded that he make the most of every moment with her. Oddly, that determination seemed to reassure her rather than drive her away.  She too had learned the value of seizing the day thanks to her loss.

Though Henry could have made it on his own, even if he didn’t need anyone to stay alive and continue on—with her, with Jo, he could truly live again.


End file.
